In a country like Pakistan, one has to deal with many levels of reality all the time. Your reality is not the same as the reality of your maid. Your maid?s reality is not the same as that of the beggar outside your car window. And these realities keep crossing over each day. The maid comes to your house, cleans your home according to your standards of what cleanliness is, and goes home to live in a one-room apartment where the bathroom is a blackened floor toilet and a family of ten sleep together. I have always wondered who I would be if I was born somewhere else. How would I perceive the world and how would it perceive me differently?

This project is also about cultural stereotypes. The way that we ?read? and profile each other in society. How the media and society view women in Pakistan. It is almost an anthropological study of the clich?s and science involved; using myself as the constant, I wanted to explore the code that goes into creating a stereotype. What do these women say about where they come from? Who is the Pakistani woman? And which stereotype am I?

As hard as we try to be individualistic and defend our originality and identities, we all follow stereotypes. In our search for acceptance, we follow the codes and rules of our immediate realities to conform even when we are trying to be non-conformists.

These are certainly not all the stereotypes of women in Pakistan, simply a starting point for thought.

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